


Lateness of Dancers

by arabybizarre



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Byleth loved Edelgard no matter who she actually ends up with, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 05:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20286187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabybizarre/pseuds/arabybizarre
Summary: "Right up until this last battle, this last moment, Byleth had insisted she didn’t want to kill Edelgard. But in the end, it could only be her."Dorothea & Byleth care about each other, but Edelgard has long loomed over both of them. That won't stop just because she's gone.





	Lateness of Dancers

In the opera, tales of war were always tales of triumph. Even in the midst of great tragedy, there were lovers nurturing hope with whispered asides and carefully placed touches. There were flowers growing out of scorched Earth, and great forgivings in the face of folly.

But Dorothea wasn’t in the opera any longer.

In her war, or rather the production of her war—because that is what it was starting to feel like—a great tragedy in which she’d been reluctantly cast, but never fully committed—there was little hope to be found. There was the suggestion of lovers: sometimes Byleth’s hand on the small of her back, the professor’s brow pinched with concern. Byleth promising protection, even while Dorothea staunchly promised that the woman’s protection was better served elsewhere.

There were even flowers in Dorothea’s war, for a time, while Byleth fastidiously maintained the Garreg Mach greenhouse, even as the outbuildings and chapel lay half in ruins. Byleth would give flowers to all her old students, though no one more than Dorothea. In her flowers, Byleth asked for an entirely different kind of forgiveness. For Byleth also fastidiously maintained that none of them would have found themselves in this predicament if it weren’t for her.

She was stubborn like that. It still made Dorothea ache.

In the opera, tales of war were always tales of triumph. Would this war end the same?

Dorothea had come to Garreg Mach for many reasons, mainly to secure a marriage, but also for an education. What she had learned, and was still learning, was this: 

No matter what tales Mittelfrank might tout, there was no winning in war, only surviving. And surviving, depending on the trail of dead that preceded it, was no triumph at all.

* * *

The opera got some things right. The surviving of a war did require some seemingly unsurvivable feats. Underdog tales were more than just thrilling theatrical fodder, after all.

By rights, the Empire should have crushed the Church of Seiros long ago. The Kingdom and Alliance were barely scraping by, but somehow, Byleth had united them, driven them forward.

And now they had taken the Capitol.

And now Edelgard was dead.

Despite the fact that Edelgard had: deceived them, divided them, distorted their sense of righteousness beyond justification—her death was still the only thing that mattered in the days following it.

In the end, Dorothea was the first to find them.

It had been a brutal push into the throne room, reinforcements pouring in from all entrances, the exits and any chance of escape for either side blocked. Petra stood tall, though a wound above her left eye clouded her vision miserably. Caspar was limping, practically dragging his right leg. Ferdinand’s horse lay dead, and beside it, the von Aegir heir clutched his abdomen, crimson welling between his fingers almost quicker than Linhardt could heal the wound. _Almost._

Dorothea was numb with adrenaline and worry. The last demonic beast had fallen by Catherine’s Thunderbrand, the emphatic _thump_ of its lifeless body still echoing through the chamber. Dorothea scanned the room, mouth ajar in disbelief. She could hear her own heartbeat thumping in her ears, her thoughts beating in time:

_Byleth is not here_. _Byleth is…_

In the throne room, Dorothea remembered. She’d shouted after her when she saw Byleth running, seizing an opening in the crush of bodies. Right up until this last battle, this last moment, Byleth had insisted she didn’t want to kill Edelgard. But in the end, it could only be her.

“Dorothea, you should not—” Petra called after her when she started running, but she could barely even hear it.

The throne room was grand in a way that operatic set pieces could never emulate. No stage had ceilings vaulted this high, columns gilded and carved so expertly. No theater had stained glass windows this tall and vibrant, natural light so white. The marble floors were clouded with shadow, and in the middle, where one body kneeled hunched over another, tarnished with blood.

Dorothea heard the others plodding in behind her, their calls of curiosity dying on their lips as they passed over the threshold. The singer was reminded bitterly of another battle, and another silence, wherein Byleth had held Jeralt’s body to her chest and wept, the rain falling steadily around her.

On that day, and in that production, Dorothea had not been bold enough to approach. Instead it had been Edelgard that met the professor where she knelt, laying a hand softly on her shoulder.

And now Edelgard was dead, and Dorothea was left to pick up her mantle.

At least she could do things differently, this time. Edelgard had laid her hand on Byleth’s shoulder before, but she had stood tall. Now Dorothea knelt beside Byleth, meeting her on her level. She did not lay her hand on the professor’s shoulder, but very softly on her jaw instead. Just as softly, she turned Byleth’s face from the carnage she had so efficiently rent.

Byleth’s green eyes, the eyes Dorothea had once professed to fear, shone like stained glass. She was ashamed to have ever said such a thing. Byleth’s penetrating inquisitiveness and placidity were still present—perhaps they always would be. But these things were belied, exceeded, by the mourning that overshadowed them.

In the opera, heroes rarely fall. Who wants to see a hero die? But heroes do fail. It’s what makes them heroes in the first place: to fail and rise above those failings so spectacularly.

_This isn’t the opera,_ Dorothea reminded herself. Byleth had failed to sway Edelgard, had failed to protect so many of her students. And by the look in her eyes, there’d be no rising above it. At least not for a long, long time.

“Look away,” Dorothea muttered into Byleth’s hair, gathering her into her chest, her rapidly beating heart.

Edelgard’s eyes were left wide open.

* * *

In the opera, everyone knows just what to say. Or rather, they know just what to sing, and everyone accepts their story as such, because life is undoubtedly much kinder when one believes in the power of song.

Byleth had never been much of a talker. She believed in a sense of economy in all things: in combat, in politics, and certainly in words. That’s not to say she wasn’t fun to talk to. On the contrary, hours and hours of idle teatimes had revealed her to be a rather impressive conversationalist. Or perhaps it was merely that her candid truisms offset Dorothea’s flowery musings in such a way that they were never at a loss for words around each other.

Up until now, at least.

Yesterday evening they had returned to Garreg Mach, a wounded yet still proud Archbishop among their caravan. They’d toiled over what to do with Edelgard’s body when the rest were cleared away, Seteth and Rhea and the generals squabbling while Byleth sat silently by. Until finally, Byleth declared that Edelgard should be laid to rest in the von Hresvelg family crypt, beside her siblings, just as she’d have wanted. The decision came so firmly, so icily that not even Lady Rhea dared contest.

And so the Archbishop and her army returned to the monastery, and Edelgard stayed behind. Byleth departed for Rhea’s chambers with Seteth and Flayn, and Dorothea…

Well, she’d meant to return to her room, but somehow ended up in Byleth’s. She knew the door would be unlocked, as it always was when they arrived to take their tea together. A stained porcelain cup, tea leaves still clumped on the bottom, sat on Byleth’s desk from their last meeting the evening before the battle.

Because it wasn’t the opera, Dorothea didn’t say the right words that evening either, nor did she sing. However, she did remark, or rather uncharacteristically blurted, _“Attractions can feel so much stronger in times of war, when you know you might die the next day. Don’t you think?”_ Byleth, in her economical way, had only nodded and sipped her tea extra studiously, though Dorothea hadn’t missed the blush staining her cheeks.

After Edelgard was dead, Dorothea returned to Byleth’s room alone, and without thinking, or even questioning, fell asleep atop the professor’s sheets with her clothes still torn and stained with blood.

* * *

The heroes of the stage never looked the way Byleth looked in the early hours before the dawn. The room was still dark, the candle beside the bed burned low, but not yet extinguished. The moon shone silver through the small windows against the far wall, starkly highlighting Byleth’s fair hair.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, fingertips gently tracing the curve of Dorothea’s cheek. The singer’s eyes opened, but she did not stir, afraid she might spook the professor—as if the woman were a fawn and not the goddess-touched warrior she’d become.

“Does it hurt?” Byleth asked.

“Does what hurt?” Dorothea’s voice was still scratchy from sleep.

Byleth stroked under Dorothea’s eye with the pad of her thumb in answer. “This bruise. It looks quite sore.”

Dorothea hadn’t thought much about her own injuries, pale as they were in comparison to some of her friends. She hadn’t even looked in a mirror since returning. “It’s nothing.”

“I can help.” Byleth was a swordmaster, through and through, but she’d grown fairly proficient in magic. Her healing touch warmed and then cooled on Dorothea’s cheek, easing a pressure she hadn’t even been aware of. Her eyes closed just a moment more.

“Thank you.” Dorothea captured Byleth’s hand in her own. The woman was remarkably unscathed but for one exception. Her knuckles were bruised, badly, and looked as though they’d only just recently stopped bleeding. “What happened to your hand?” Dorothea sat up a little straighter, holding fast to Byleth when she made to retreat. She searched the other woman’s gaze, but Byleth’s attention was focused on Dorothea’s hands, the way they cradled her own.

Eventually, she quietly answered, “I was upset.”

“Upset.” Dorothea sat up fully, rumpling the sheets and her stained clothing all at once. “Did you do this?”

Byleth was not a woman given to sheepishness often, but now she looked away with the air of a guilty child. “Maybe.”

On any normal day, the shame on Byleth’s face would have squeezed her heart in such a way that she could barely even chide her. But Dorothea was still thinking of Edelgard prone on the floor. Thinking of all the people that had been killed for them to get to that point, and how none of it would have been at all bearable without Byleth there.

An unexpected, maybe even unreasonable spike of anger lanced through Dorothea, hot and quick, and she tugged on Byleth’s injured hand. “Why would you do that? Does injury mean nothing to you?”

“It’s fine, Dorothea,” Byleth gritted. She meant her hand, of course. But it didn’t feel like it.

“It’s not _fine._ It’s foolish. There’s still a war going on. And you are not invincible!”

“It’s just my damn hand!” Byleth stood suddenly, eyes flickering with an anger to match Dorothea’s own. But there was something else behind it, an obvious anguish that took the words out of Dorothea’s mouth. “What is this? You come into my room uninvited while I’m gone and then… you wait for me to return so you can scold me?”

Byleth’s voice had risen to a near-frantic pitch Dorothea had never heard from her before. The singer’s eyes widened, and she held her hands to her chest.

“Do you know how tired I am?”

Byleth broke on the word _tired. _And though this was not the opera, the crack in her voice, and the way it coincided so perfectly with the first rays of the dawn splashing through the windows, felt almost too precisely coordinated to be anything but.

However, if this were a production, and Byleth _was_ the hero of this tale, she couldn’t possibly look as small as she did in that moment.

“Byleth,” Dorothea stood, “I didn’t mean—”

“I never wanted to do it.”

She didn’t have to ask what _it_ was. Dorothea knew. “I never wanted you to either,” she said, reaching for the professor. It was only a partial truth. Half of her never wanted Byleth to shoulder that burden, but the other half knew she was the only one who could.

“She said she was glad it was me.”

“Did she?” Dorothea’s hands were on Byleth’s arms, her cheeks.

“How could she say that to me?”

“She never should have…” Dorothea bit her tongue. Her anger flared anew, this time towards Edelgard and all that she’d put them through. “She probably thought that was a kindness.” Byleth’s eyes were glassy and bloodshot again, and Dorothea could see plainly that there was more in them that needed to be said, but perhaps, for the professor’s sake, couldn’t be. Not now, at least.

“You need to sleep. Come on.” Dorothea guided her towards the bed, helping her to remove first her jacket and then her shoes. Exhausted as she was, Byleth let her, just as she let Dorothea guide her beneath the sheets and into her arms. The steady beat of the singer’s heart under her ear calmed her immeasurably. It couldn’t erase what she’d had to do the day before, but it softened the sharpest edges of it.

“I was hoping you would be here, after,” Byleth muttered, her breath warm atop Dorothea’s breast. “If you weren’t, I would’ve found you anyway.” Her arms tightened around Dorothea’s waist. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to,” Dorothea reminded her, kissing her forehead, and then her temple. At last, Byleth turned up to look at her, and Dorothea kissed her on the lips, too, not for the first time, and if these final days of battle were at all merciful, not for the last.

In Dorothea’s production of the war, maybe a declaration of love would have followed, and then something more. Maybe they would have removed their blood-stained clothes and consummated the thing they’d been building for months, or rather years at this point.

But the truth of war was that it was exhausting, and sometimes words went unsaid. But sometimes, too, lovers didn’t need words to declare what they both knew lay between them. Sometimes, knowing the other would still be there when you woke was enough. And what words were left after that?

When she returned to consciousness much later, Byleth’s now healed hand said it all.

**Author's Note:**

> That was more angst than I anticipated. Oh, well. I hope you enjoyed regardless :) 
> 
> Also, my Byleth was named after a Hiss Golden Messenger song so I figured the fic should be, too.


End file.
